ABOUT THE SHOW

show rundown

Whether you call it football or soccer, you can’t understand it without understanding the modern world — and you can’t understand the modern world without understanding its most popular sport. Join host David Goldblatt for conversations about politics, culture, economics, immigration, religion, cinema — and of course, some all-time favorite goals.

host david goldblatt

Credit: Luke Goldblatt Bond

David Goldblatt is a sociologist, journalist, and author. He is best known for his books The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football and The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, a definitive social, political, and sporting history of the global game. Goldblatt has covered sports for The Guardian, The Observer, Financial Times, and many more. He taught sociology of sport at Pitzer College.

In The Sunday Times, Dominic Sandbrook wrote: “David Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been.”

He was born in London in 1965 and, for his sins, inherited Tottenham Hotspur from his father. For the past fifteen years he’s lived in Bristol and has since acquired Bristol Rovers.

Tony Karon is the managing editor of AJ+. More importantly, he teaches a graduate course on “The Politics of Global Soccer” at the New School in New York. And more importantly still, he has Never Walked Alone since 1974, when he first embraced Liverpool FC back in the days when the ‘keeper could pick up a back-pass and teams were only allowed one substitute. Tony proclaims himself the consummate plastic scouse, having spent his best years fighting apartheid in his native South Africa, and living the dream in Brooklyn. Being a son of Africa, his heart will be with Senegal in Russia — but his affections are transferable to Nigeria, Egypt — or even FrancAfrique.

Raja Shah is the senior producer of Game of Our Lives. He began playing soccer at age 4 in the under-5 rec league in his hometown of Fairfield, CT. He retired from the sport by age 6 after one too many own goals, and has since turned his attention towards basketball, where his lifelong allegiance to the New York Knicks would apparently set him up well to be a West Ham supporter.